The last person to see me last week in the hospital and critically important to my being allowed to leave was a delightful young woman on their staff, affiliated with Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. It's a pretty good commute from those parts to Norwich and I was going to ask her if she'd lost a bar bet but decided that very type of question might reveal more about me than I'd like. A thought process which I thought was incredibly clever and I awarded myself a ''get out of the hospital free" card. It wasn't and I almost didn't.
She had a series of word problems of graduated difficulty for me to solve. Thankfully, nothing that involved speeding locomotives leaving different cities at the same time at different speeds. I hated those problems as a child and especially hate them now as I never get them right. Her whole focus was to see if I could actually develop a logical thought and articulate it from formulation to fruition. Considering my last original thought died of loneliness, I was more than a bit worried.
The last question, the make-or-break scenario, involved my listening to a rather elaborate narrative she was reciting and remembering three particular words. In case I lost track of what was going on with each of the three words, she would pause and say 'remember this word' then say the word and then repeat the word before moving on. When crunch time came, I hit it out of the park, for purposes of this story.
However, I don't think she intended that a week after the quiz, I should still be remembering any of them much less all of them, but I do and since I can't seem to forget them, having now told you about them, I can take solace in no longer being alone in remembering them. American Beauty. Daily Planet. Wimpy.
-bill kenny
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